Multi-Armed and Dangerous

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So, you've got a character that you want to show is really dangerous. You could give them the normal two arms or legs, but that's just not enough. Maybe you could replace one of those arms with a really big gun, or a sword, or have it transform into something else.

For obvious reasons, normal humans don't get this treatment, because it would look pretty awkward having to do bodily cleaning... and having four arms to go around would be a tailor's nightmare. If you're a mutant or an evil genius, you don't have to worry about this, because Freaky Is Cool.

Multi-Armed and Dangerous characters come in two flavors:

The extra arms are a regular part of the body.

They're made from prosthetics/synthetic materials that are usually attached to the person.

As of the 21st century, there is (very expensive) technology that allows a person to control an artificial limb with the same mental process as an organic limb and can be used to control extraneous limbs with only a minimal period of adjustment. Truth in Television is only a matter of time...

Examples

Nnoitra Gilga, whose released form allows him multiple arms, as well as regeneration powers. Initially he has four arms, and four scythes to go with them. When one of his arms is promptly sliced off by his opponent, the regeneration kicks in and he also ups the arm count to six.

Wonderweiss's release form also lets him grow a bunch of extra arms coming from his shoulders.

The battle-suit (mini-mecha) Double Edge from the anime Blue Gender has a pair of gigantic blades on its shoulder that not only allow it to slice and dice but also double as grappling claws.

Tenshinhan used a technique that had him grow two additional arms to fight Goku in the original series. Goku countered by moving his arms so fast it at least looked like he had six.

Inverted in Dragon Ball Z with Caterpy, a giant Caterpillar warrior that "fights" Goku in Otherworld. He lives up to his Multi-Armed status with 10 arms to use for combat. His "Dangerous" side... Not so much.

Mamoru Nagano is probably the king of this trope, because if he designs mecha the chances are that they will be multiarmed. In his own series, The Five Star Stories, the biggest, nastiest and most heavily armed mecha of all times, the Jagd Mirage, had not just two like The O, but four deployable sub-arms, which, together with its two additional sub-legs, drove the limb count to ten. These sub-arms could be used to wield swords of guns, but generally were used to manipulate shields (called veils there) to cover the mecha and brace it against the immense recoil of the two truly titanical cannons it carried as its main armament.

In Franken Fran, Fran occasionally affixes as many as four extra arms to her body for particularly delicate procedures; Apparently, turning a mutilated human into a giant caterpillar with a human head is fussy work.

The armed suits seen in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex feature two sets of arms; a large pair scaled to the mecha used to operate weapons and manipulate large/heavy objects, and the pilot's own smaller arms to allow him to perform tasks the larger arms would be unsuited for.

The O, personal mobile suit to Big Bad Paptimus Scirocco of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam has a pair of beam saber wielding sub arms in its skirt armor, thus turning the massive Mighty Glacier looking machine into a Lightning Bruiser melee combat monster as it can wield four beam sabers at once with perfect control thanks to its mentally controlled biocomputer. That's because The O was designed by none other than Mamoru Nagano, who is a great fan of this trope.

The Gaplant TR-5 from Advance of Zeta also has skirt-armor subarms, while Gundam Hazel can be equipped with, in addition to the aforementioned skirt-armor subarms, two giant wire-guided rocket arms developed from the Psyco Gundam on its shoulder and wire-guided arm-shield on its forearm.

The Xeku Zwei from Gundam Sentinel has two more sub arms for melee and shooting a giant beam bazooka.

Seravee Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has four BFGs, two on its shoulders and two in its knees. These all are capable of sprouting hands equipped with beam sabers in addition to the Seravee's normal pair, allowing Seravee to simultaneously fight with six beam sabers at one time. One can see that they really went out of their way to keep Seravee from suffering from its predecessor Gundam Virtue's weakness in close-range combat. That's right: Seravee is a BFG-toting long-range artillery mobile suit with multiple arms wielding multiple beam sabers as back-up weaponry.

Gundam Build Fighters and Gundam Build Fighters Try don't have too many stock suits with extra arms... but the individually-sold weapons packs do, allowing you to create, for example, a Crossbone Gundam with manipulators armed with a pistol, a knife, a guan dao and a hook. One suit with extra arms from Try is the GM Powered Cardigan, which has guns and shields mounted on extending arms.

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: A major part of the series's design aesthetics are the "sub-arms" which are crane like additions to the Mobile Suit back-pack. Their use show the major differences in design choices between the Federation and Zeon: Federation suits use their sub-arms for defense (having them hold the shields while the MS's main arms use the weapons) while the Zeon suits use them for offense (often the sub-arms weild guns or are used for quick reloads or weapon switching).

Some Chimera Ants in ''Hunter × Hunter" have multiple arms, and they're all far stronger than normal humans.

Isaac Netero's Nen ability, the "100 Type Guanyin Bodhisattva", is a giant golden manifestation of a buddhist goddess with many, many arms. It's one of the most powerful Nen abilities in the series.

One of the teams in The Law of Ueki, which has a military theme, has a guy whose special ability is growing extra arms. To carry more guns. The upgraded form of this ability is even more arms. To shoot even more guns.

Sasori has the Third Kazekage's puppet form equipped with this, ironically being one of the few examples in the series to be caused by a jutsu.

One of Pain's multiple bodies, the Asura Path, has six arms, and on top of that, THREE FACES. Like all the other Paths of Pain, this is actually a reference to Buddhism; the asuras are a type of diety which also have those features.

Hosts of a tailed beast are capable of making limbs out of chakra sprout from their body. Killer Bee makes Combat Tentacles while Naruto eventually learns to make them into many extra limbs that can each make their own Rasengan. This even includes making a pair of tiny hands coming from his finger that form their own tiny Rasenshuriken.

By far and away the most dangerous example of this trope is Madara Uchiha's Susanoo, especially its perfect form. Four arms, two strange blades, and capable of contributing to his techniques through also using hand signs. He cuts a mountain in half with it just to show off!

The above example is topped by, fittingly enough, his archenemy Hashirama Senju. To fight a Nine-Tails sheathed in the above-mentioned Perfect Susanoo, he creates a giant moving Kannon statue, complete with one thousand arms.

Asura sports a 6-armed, 3-headed variant of Kurama's chakra form. Naruto jerry-rigs a similar aura by fusing three Kurama clones together while in Six Paths Sage Mode, and he uses the additional appendages to form a normal/Tailed Beast Rasenshuriken combo, powerful enough to engulf an entire country.

Dolor, the Giant Clan founder in Nanatsu No Taizai, has four arms. The other giants have only two, though.

Rengoku in Ninja Scroll: The Series is a shinobi that bears four arms. Additionally, as she's proficient with self-surgery, she has a penchant for removing her own arms and attaching other beings' limbs (animals included) onto her own body to suit her current needs.

Vice Admiral Onigumo has a Spider Devil's Fruit, whose mastery of it allows use to manifest the extra arms he'd normally get in his hybrid form via his hair, allowing him to use eight swords at once.

During the Thriller Bark story arc, we get a brief glimpse at a zombie general who has four arms, each holding a pistol. Given the nature of the island's zombies, we can presume that these were grafted on by Dr. Hogback. Unfortunately, we never see this zombie again, and can only imagine the badassery that he could have dealt out.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica takes this trope to its logical extreme with Patricia: A Witch that's literally just a bundle of 6 arms in a sailor fuku, that forms something like a rudimentary "spider". Look!◊

One of the one-off characters in Ranma ˝, Rouge, fell into "The Spring of Drowned Asura". Asura is a Hindu god (or demon) with three faces and six arms. Rouge and Pantyhose Taro manage to destroy the Tendō home in a fight over therapeutic magnets.

In the anime Claymore you can see a male Awakened Being, who has six arms.

Card Games

The orochi-bito from Magic: The Gathering's Kamigawa setting. The Vedalken, a more widespread species, also demonstrate two more arms than other humanoids, at least in some forms - the mutated vedalken of Mirrodin sport four, while Ravnica's and Alara's mostly only have two, with the exception of Vigean Graftmage who at least has the excuse of being a mutant.

Super Munchkin has the "Four-Armed and Forewarned" power, which gives your character two extra Hand Slots for items.

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Too many monsters to count. Here are a few honorable mentions.

The Ritual Monster, Garma Sword, has six arms wielding six swords with all six of his arms.

Number C39: Utopia Ray has two normal arms and two mechanical arms. His two main arms wield each one BFS, while his mechanical arms wield an even bigger one.

Number C39: Utopia Ray Victory has four arms, two of them are hidden inside the other two arms. With four swords, his Signature Attack has the shape of two Vs.

The X-Men villain Spiral has six arms (two of which are cybernetic, presumably replacing real ones lost from injury in a battle that happened before her first appearance); she's also both a sorceress and can fight with a sword in each hand.

In Earth X, there is a woman with six arms that goes by the name of Black Widow (no relation to Natasha Romanoff). She had sporadic appearances within the comic, appearing either in long shots or as part of the background, as well as having no spoken dialogue. An early concept sketch for Venom also showed her with six arms, generated by the symbiote.

Coat Of Arms only has two naturally but her coat gives her two more.

Ai Apaec of the Dark Avengers has about eight limbs, and he could be joined by any other deities from mythology who were examples should Marvel decide to use them.

In one of the issues of her solo series, Mystique utilized her shapeshifting abilities to grow a pair of extra arms to use in combat. It's noted that she could not maintain this state for long, as the transformation apparently put her under heavy strain.

Itsy Bitsy from Spider-Man/Deadpool, a woman received DNA from both Spider-Man and Deadpool, which caused her to turn into a spider-like psychotic creature. She has six arms armed with guns and organic webbing sharp.

Stryker from Image Comics' Cyberforce was a mutant born with four arms... three on one side. After an accident resulted in the loss of all three right arms, he was fixed up with cybernetics, once again, for all three. Not only is he a pretty normal guy aside from a slight temper problem, he gleefully uses his three right arms to triple wield pistols in combat.

On the subject of Superman, he once took on an obscure villain in the Golden Age named Grax who's gimmick, aside from being as smart as Brainiac, was that he had four arms.

Rip Roar, a bad guy from Young Justice. In fact, the original YJ baddie. A wrestler from Apokolips, ol' Rip has four arms and more hair than the floor at Supercuts.

Frank Miller's Ronin features a humanoid four-armed rat ninja that threatens the title character at one point. He loses one arm to the samurai almost instantly, but still puts up a good fight with the remaining three.

A one-shot comic that goes by the name of Chase Variant features a female lead that sports four arms.

In the DC Universe the demon Hellrazer had two arms and two long tentacles coming out of his hips.

Black Moon Chronicles: During a massive engagement between the Black Moon and the Empire of Lynn, Haazheel Thorn transforms into a gigantic four-armed titan to throw magic blasts at the opposing armies.

Monstructor is depicted as having four arms in IDW's run of The Transformers comic books: his two large arms formed by Bristleback and Wildfly, and a smaller pair that are Slog's monster-mode arms.

The Sewell family of Copperhead have four well-developed humanoid arms. It's a great advantage in fistfights.

In the Lilo & Stitch fanfiction, Aloha, members of the Swarm have four arms: the upper set that are larger and shaped like the pinchers of a praying mantis and the lower set that are smaller and end in three-fingered hands.

General Grievous has arms that can both split in two. He's a cyborg, so it kind of makes sense. In Star Wars: Clone Wars he could hold lightsabers with his feet, too. So theoretically he could use five lightsabers at once (one foot would still be needed to stand on). In Legends, Grievous had repulsorlift installed in his feet so that he could float and use his feet as hands, thus allowing him to Sextuple wield Lightsabers.

Obi-Wan's contact Dex had four arms, but this may just avert this trope as he didn't play any part in the main series other than an information source. Star Wars: The Clone Wars (not the same as the previously mentionedClone Wars) introduces another member of the species, Jedi Master Pong Krell, who "merely" dual-wielded double-sided lightsabers, but did do a four-way Force shove.

The Thisspiasians, who have four arms and no legs (they slither along on the ground instead). They, however, prefer to keep their two lower arms hidden in public.

Maybe not as dangerous, but used as a surprise: Zaphod tags Arthur with a surprise lower left (or is it centre?) in the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. According to the novel, Zaphod had the extra arm fitted to improve his ski-boxing.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. A statue of the Hindu goddess Kali is animated, "grows" a sword out of each palm of her six hands and fights Sinbad and his crew.

Six-Shooter in the Puppet Master movies is a cowboy puppet with six arms and as many little revolvers.

During the final chase sequence in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the T-1000 can briefly be seen operating the helicopter's controls with two arms while reloading and firing his submachinegun with another two.

One of the assassins in Ćon Flux (based on the animated show as well) has hands instead of feet.

In the original Clash of the Titans, the Kraken has four arms and the goddess Thetis says that it's capable of destroying the entire city of Joppa and all of its inhabitants. In the 2010 version it has two arms and two tentacles.

Several Kaiju (Trespasser, Scunner, Knifehead) in Pacific Rim have four arms. The Chinese Jaeger Crimson Typhoon has three arms (one large right arm and two small left arms).

Men in Black 3 features a four-armed alien thug at a bowling alley who pulls four guns on Agent K. Subverted because K makes short work of him anyway.

Godzilla (2014): Both MUTOs possess eight limbs total: the female has four forelegs, two hind legs, and a set of smaller arms, while the male MUTO has two forelegs, two hind legs, a pair of enormous wings, and a set of smaller arms. The Teaser Trailer Monster has several arms with hooked claws.

Literature

Visser Three from Animorphs morphs into a vaguely-described creature like this in The Threat. All that's really known about it is that it is "dark and large and has more arms than it should".

Quadrus "Quad" Dominus from Duumvirate starts carrying a gun for each of his four hands after a brush with death. He's six at the time.

The "Moties" from Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye have asymmetric limbs — two small arms on the right, and one massive arm (the "gripping hand") on the left. Humans talk about how this arrangement gives Moties the ability to use fine dexterity as well as raw strength.

The Drummer from Wild Cards. His multiple arms aren't exactly combat-specific, but he can use them that way quite effectively.

Technically speaking, both species have two arms, two legs, and two "intermediate limbs" that can be used as both.

The Wreed from Calculating God have arms in front and back as well as two on either side. They escape the "two eyes" problem by having a single optical strip that runs around their entire "head". They suffer from multiple cognitive deficits as a (dubious) result, though.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Zaphod Beeblebrox has three arms. He wasn't born that way; he got the third one added on to help with his "ski-boxing". And according to And Another Thing..., this may actually be so he has one hand for each of Eccentrica Gallumbits' breasts. Though it's not clear entirely.

The Shrike from Hyperion is a 3-meter tall, 4-armed, time-manipulating killing machine (literally) covered in spikes. Granted, having 4 arms instead of 2 doesn't make it much more dangerous than it would already be, as it can stop time and wipe out entire armies.

The Chaos creature Skarhaddoth from Hammer of Daemons has four arms. In his first appearance he wields two meat cleavers along with two shields, and in his second he uses four scimitars. There are other multi-armed Chaos beasties stalking Draakasi. Dark Adeptus has various Techpriests with mechadendrites running around.

In Ciaphas Cain: For the Emperor, there is a plot point related to this trope. A tau ambassador is assassinated in the middle of a party and no-one can see who the shooter was, especially when everyone draws weapons in the ensuing confusion. It turns out to be the person who seemed one of the least likely, Governor Grice, because he's secretly a tyranid mutant and his shapeless clothes hide not a flabby body but an extra arm easily capable of coming out to fire a gun and withdrawing back, leaving his other two hands innocently empty.]] was a perfect example

Techno-magos Darioq, from the Word Bearers novel Dark Apostle, has four heavy weapons (two heavy bolters and 2 plasma cannons), multiple heavy melee weapons, and around 10 mechadendrites. Over the course of the novel, he rips off a Chaos Terminator's arms and cuts him in half. After being bathed in flames for several seconds.

Sulphus, the Techmarine from the Deathwatch novel Warrior Coven, has three mechanical arms and one organic one. These arms allow him to fly a speeder and use the turret at the same time as well as firing his bolter, something that would normally require three people. At one point, he uses two of his arms to hold on to a spinning Talos and the other two to rip an armour plate off. He then jumps inside, blows it up and does a walking out through the flames sequence like in the first Terminator

The indigenous aliens of Marduk, in David Weber's Prince Roger series, had four arms, which along with being huge, allowed them to carry BFGs that the humans had used on their now-defunct power armor.

It was also useful with more primitive weapons since they could use their lower arms to hold up a shield while wielding a pike with their upper limbs. Similarly when equipped with simple breech-loading rifles they were able to reload with two arms while holding the rifle in the others.

The warrior drone cho-ja in Janny Wurt's Empire trilogy. Their multiple arms also end in blades.

The title character of Mikhail Akhmanov's Dick Simon novels was born in a human town on planet Tayahat whose gravity is 1.5 Earth norm. The planet is populated by a tribal race of four-armed humanoids. Their males live for combat, and boys are trained from young age to kill (as well as honor). Dick is brought to them as a boy by his father and is raised as one of them, before leaving to join the Academy, where he receives more modern training as an operative by a red-headed Texan.

In a bizarrely non-fantastic example, Flint Murtaugh from Robert R. McCammon's Gone South is a bounty hunter with three arms: his own, and the single undersized limb of his parasitic twin, Clint. Clint is near-mindless, blind, and embedded in Flint's torso, yet has been trained by his brother to point a small pistol as a hold-out surprise. Subverted in that Clint can't aim or fire it properly, but Flint's quarry seldom realizes this.

This is one of the key plot points in the Tipping Point Trilogy , by Alan Dean Foster. Bodily manipulation is as easy as getting new custom-fitted clothing and is often used to add extra limbs. Note that these are not necessarily weapons, or designed explicitly to carry weapons; for instance, a waiter may get an extra set of arms to improve carrying capacity.

In the Vorkosigan Saga, the Quaddies are so named because they have four arms and no legs (they are genetically designed freefall dwellers.) In Diplomatic Immunity Miles notes how unfair it is that their troops can literally shoot and reload at the same time.

Journey to Chaos: Giji Mesh has four arms and is a squad captain in the Dragon's Lair Mercenary company. She uses them to juggle swords.

Pritha Prithvi from The Red And The Rest is a human centaur: up until her shoulders she has the body of a human, then another torso again. Besides making her very tall, this gives her four arms, much like classical centaurs have four legs and two arms.

Marco from Strata has four arms, and is an extremely dangerous fighter. An invoked example, as his species (kung) normally have two arms, but those slated to be warrior-caste are operated upon before birth to cause them to grow extra limbs.

In The Girl From The Well, one of the ghosts Tark fights in The Suffering is a hoso-de, a spirit which has seven arms.

Majipoor Series: Skandar are towering humanoids with four arms. They often use multiple weapons at a time when fighting and are pretty excellent jugglers as well.

Live-Action TV

When Piper and Leo got possessed by a couple of Hindu gods in one episode of Charmed, Piper grew four more arms.

In the fourth season episode "The Way" of Xena: Warrior Princess, Xena and Gabrielle are confronted by a demonic sorcerer named Indrajit while in India. After Xena slices off one of Indrajit's arms, it grows back and is soon joined by four more. Now a six-armed warrior, Indrajit proceeds to prove his badassery by slicing both of Xena's arms off. But wait, there's more! Xena, literally disarmed at this point, calls upon the Hindu god Krishna to help her. He transforms her into an avatar of Kali Freaky Is Cool. Needless to say, if you thought Xena was wicked before, think about how dangerous she is once she becomes a four-armed goddess of death. Indrajit, surprise surprise, is no longer with us. When the battle is over, she is restored to normal.

Monty Python's Flying Circus. One of Terry Gilliam's animations had a mugger saying "Hands up!" to a victim. The victim puts his hands up — and then another pair of hands (and arms), and another... then slams all of his hands on the mugger's head.

Neil of The Young Ones was temporarily granted six pairs of hands by an unseen genie, but the genie was killed and the extra arms vanished before he could use his new appendages, or even show them to his housemates.

Although we never see them, the Venusians who invented the type of aikido practiced by some versions of Doctor Who are said to have five arms and five legs, which make its various maneuvers a lot more effective.

Almost all Hindu deities, but probably most notably Kali◊. Hindu deities are only depicted as having multiple limbs to show their divinity and ability to do multiple things at the same time. Depending on the intent of the depiction, you can find representations of the Hindu gods with the standard 2 arms and 2 legs, rather than the typically thought of 6 arms, 2 legs.

The Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara is often depicted with a thousand arms.

The three Hekatonkheir brothers in Hesiod's Theogony were massive giants (or perhaps deities) who embodied natural disasters, born with a hundred arms and fifty heads each. They were on the Greek God's side and greatly helped them in the battle against the Titans by throwing one hundred mountains a piece at once at the immortal enemies, whom they then served as jailers for in revenge for being sealed away earlier by Kronus.

Norse Mythology: As told in The Saga of Hervor and Heidrek, the giant Starkad Aludreng (grandfather of the more famous Starkad the Old) had eight arms and wielded four swords at once in combat. He was eventually killed by Thor for abducting princess Alfhild of Alfheim.

Sahuagin are a race of evil fishmen. The normal ones are dangerous enough, but some of them also sprout an extra set of arms.

Thri-Kreen ("mantis warriors") — badass race of social mantis-hoppers living in arid lands, abundant in (but not limited to) Athas, the Dark Sun setting. Has inheritance memory, poisonous bite, low water requirement, hard exoskeleton, derives construction material from saliva, jumps like grasshopper, throws big shurikens... and can wield small or medium weapons in each of four hands.

Second and third edition have the Modrons, Outsiders and embodiments of Law and Order who had geometric shapes based on their caste, and a number of limbs equal to that caste. Tridrones, Quadrones and Pentadrones, the most intelligent of the "base" Modrons, have three, four and five arms respectively (as well as an equal number of legs).

Dungeon Master's Guide 2 for 3.5e had the Abberant-Limbed trait, which allowed one to gain either an extra pair of arms, or an extra pair of legs. Either way, it added a couple of level adjustments. Other options included the Insectile Creature Template from Savage Species , Arachnoid Creature Template from Underdark (didn't apply to Humanoids, but see Template stacking...) and a web enhancement for customising the Half-Fiend Template.

The Known World setting of Basic D&D (and the Mystara setting of AD&D) have the Bone (Skeletal) Golem. It has four arms, all capable of wielding weapons.

The Greyhawk setting deity Hextor has six arms, with two hands holding shields and four holding weapons.

Module S1 Tomb of Horrors had a mutated four armed gargoyle that attacked anyone entering its room.

The White Wolf supplement Creature Collection III: Savage Bestiary had the multi-armed template, which could be applied to... well, anything, so long as it has arms. This includes your character.

There were enough of these in 3.5 that they had their own feats: Multiattack (allowing a monster to use all of his arms with less of a penalty) and Multi-Weapon Fighting (like Two-Weapon Fighting, but for more than two weapons).

3rd Edition Creature Collection supplement. The Narleth was a half-human/half-spider monster with four arms ending in strong, clawed hands.

A number of deities and related creatures in the 1E AD&D Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia had multiple arms.

Adeptus Mechanicus Techpriests have "mechadendrites" attached to them, but they normally are not very badass. Although that depends entirely what part of the Adeptus you meet. There's your garden variety cog-head and then there's the Mechanicus Secutor who tends to be a walking tank with several gun mechadendrites modified to not carry holdout laspistols but flamethrowers...

The multi-limbed Badasses are Techmarines and higher Tyranid organisms. Also, to some extent, Warp Spider Exarchs with their armour-mounted, independently fired weapons.

Greater Daemons of Slaanesh (Keepers of Secrets, as they're known) have two regular arms (and often carry large swords or whips) and two arms with huge pincers. The Masque of Slaanesh is a Daemonette special character with three arms (one normal, one small pincer arm and one large pincer arm). Some of the parts in the current Chaos Spawn kit have things like arms splitting into several limbs or big spiky tentacles coming off the back. But then, this is Chaos, of course there is.

Every Tyranid has six limbs. Some have two pairs of legs, some have six limbs that aren't much use for more than moving. The rest have two (or six) pairs of arms. And both pairs are either blades designed to rip you apart or holding guns made to shoot small organisms at you (which proceed to rip you apart).

The ultimate enforced of this trope is the Swarmlord, the top tier tyranid, with 4 arm, equipped with utterly letal bonesaber, capable of deliver a devastating Curb-stomp to almost anyone in the galaxy.

Dark Eldar Wracks and Grotesques (hideous Frankstenian monsters, except they're made when the various parts are still alive and conscious)tend to have any number of limbs, some with incorporated weapons. Their creators, the Haemonculi, like to do this to themselves too. To a lesser extent, Dark Eldar Scourges are particularly brave/stupid individuals who have paid a Haemonculus to make them capable of flight via surgical modifications to hollow wings and add wings and flight muscles.

In the 1st and 2nd Edition of the game, Mutants in a Scavvy gangs could purchase extra arms that allowed them to wield more weapons during combat.

Genestealer Hybrids typically have between two and four arms. The 3rd Edition rules for Genestealer Cult Gangs allow a player to purchase an extra arm for their fighters as an item of wargear, allowing them to easily handle an unwieldy weapon or to gain extra attacks in combat.

Four Burning Fists and the Shiva Squadron from the "Glimpse of the Abyss" supplement have multiple arms, the former having four arms and the latter having eight arms like their Hindu god namesake. In addition, anyone who has the Creature schtick "Multiple Arms" can be Multi-Armed and Dangerous as well.

Plus there's "Three Pistol" Sammy Chung from a Feng Shui fansite, who's a demon with three arms (the third one in the center) that, as his nickname implies, specializes in a rather freaky form of three-gun Guns Akimbo.

The game Werewolf: The Apocalypse has the Ananasi werespiders, whose hybrid form has either six arms, six legs, or four of each (the player picks one at character creation). However, it takes a fairly high-level spell to be proficient at multitasking. It's also worth noting that the Bagheera wereleopards/panthers' most powerful spell is the Juddho form: a 12-foot, six-armed monstrosity in a state of frenzy for the spell's duration and wielding a flaming sword in each hand. Um yeah, one of multiple reasons why Vampires were never strong in India.

In the Promethean: The Created setting, Pandoran transmutations are capable of granting extra limbs. There is also a Sourcebook which provides a multi-armed fighting style. The title of the Prometheans who work to cause decay, the Centimani, means "Hundred-Handed". Most Centimani are usually content with a few extra pairs of limbs, tentacles and maybe some redundant organs, but there isn't much that stops a truly ancient, powerful and horrific Centimanus from adopting a hundred arms and fifty heads like Hecatonchires, their namesake monster.

Two examples from Vampire: The Masquerade. First and foremost are the Tzimisce, whose clan specialty, Vicissitude, allows them to mold living beings — higher levels and sufficient skill could allow them to grant extra limbs to whatever they desire. And their clan-exclusive Path of Enlightenment encourages experimentation. One such experiment was the bloodline called the Blood Brothers, who were created in packs and had an ability that, at higher levels, could allow them to "borrow" body parts (frequently limbs for attacking) from others in their pack.

Demons from Demon: The Descent can buy several sets of extra limbs for their demon form at character creation, with the option to buy even more as they increase in power, although "limbs" in this case is a bit of a stretch as they includes things like lengths of chain with butchers hooks on the end, industrial vices that orbit the demons body and crab pincers attached to its back by lengths of plasma. Bonus points for being able to manifest these in human form with only a slight amount of effort.

Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), the most powerful of the gods. He's invulnerable, cannot lose at anything, and sports a pair of extra arms.

Further, some Lunars and Fair Folk can obtain a second pair of arms as a mutation. Even some mortals might end up afflicted with it, if they're unlucky enough to stay in the Wyld for prolonged periods (ie, more than 5 seconds).

Alchemicals and Infernals can also get in on this action. Alchemicals can install Manifold Transhuman Implants to access mutations, while Infernals can manifest them with By Rage Recast or just bless themselves with Verdant Emptiness Endowment enhanced by Scoured Perfection of Form. Both allow multiple limbs among the mutations they can grant.

In the default world of Glorantha, the giant Grotarons (a.k.a. Trimanes and Maidstone Archers) have a third arm where their head would be (and eyes on the backs of their hands and a mouth in their solar plexus...) They use massive bows, held in their left and right arms and drawn with their top arms.

Supplement Dorastor: Land of Doom. The Chaos creature Yeachi has four arms. It uses them to fire arrows from two bows at once in ranged combat or hit opponents with the bows (attacking with them as if they were staffs) in melee combat.

Judges Guild

The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor. The would-be deity Angall of the Perpetual Void had four arms. He normally fought with two +1 swords in his right hands and two +1 maces in his left hands, doing up to 72 Hit Points of damage per round with all four weapons combined.

The Treasure Vaults of Lindoran. In one room the PCs can fight a four-armed bear that's as strong as a giant.

Dark Tower. The Lesser Sons of Set and Chosen Sons of Set can have multiple arms. Manahath the Chosen, a Chosen Son of Set the PCs will encounter at the end of the module, has two pairs of arms.

The Dungeoneer magazine #10, article "Monster Matrix". The Reflector Beast has four arms and can attack its enemies with a long, thin dagger in each hand. Each dagger attacks at a +3 chance to hit and +3 Hit Points damage per hit and it can split its attacks among up to four opponents at a time. It can throw up to 8 daggers per combat round at fleeing opponents, each with a +5 chance to hit.

The Circle and M.E.T.E.. Two of the guest aliens at M.E.T.E. - T't'shlr (four arms and a lethal hand to hand attack) and Case 39 after it hatches (14 arms and superhuman strength). Case 39's mother has the same number of arms as its child and even greater strength.

The Hero System Bestiary had the Giant Squid (10 tentacles) and Giant Octopi (8 arms), both of which were quite dangerous to humans.

The raw Extra Limbs power is, incidentally, one of the cheaper ones in the game — 5 character points buy any number of extras, from a useful tail over an extra set of arms or two to a cloud of tentacles. This is because the power in and of itself is mainly cosmetic and doesn't include any "free" combat bonuses or extra actions per turn; those still have to be bought and paid for normally if the character is supposed to have them.

Orlens are humanoids with four arms. They all have the telepathy and telekinesis mutations, and some of them have additional mutations such as poison claws and devolution.

Any mutant can have the Additional Body Parts mutation, which can be 1-10 additional arms. One example is the menarl, a giant water snake with 1-10 arms and tremendous strength.

Call of Cthulhu has a number of deities and monsters that have multiple arms/tentacles and can kill a human being quickly. Azathoth (up to 6 tentacles), Being from Xiclotl (6 tentacles), Cthugha (up to 4 tentacles), Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath (4 tentacles), Flying Polyps (up to 12 tentacles), Gugs (2 arms, 4 forearms), Old Ones (5 tentacles), Servitor of the Outer Gods (up to 6 tentacles), Shub-Niggurath (dozens of tentacles), Giant Squid (8 tentacles).

Volume III had the Yarzooyn, a large six-armed humanoid that attack with a sword in each hand.

Earthdawn. The Horror named Hate had twelve arms and could make three attacks per combat round.

Rifts (and also Palladium Fantasy) have Rahu-Men, four armed giants who can wield giant-sized weapons in each hand.

Varanae generic RPG supplement Monstrum 1

Green Giants have 4 arms that each do 3-18 Hit Points of damage per hit.

Nara-Simha are humanoids with the heads of lions and six long arms that end in powerful claws. Each arm inflicts 2-8 H It Points of damage.

Arduin RPG, The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources

The Earth Demon has four long arms that each do 11-30 Hit Points of damage per hit.

The Storm Demon has four arms, each of which inflicts 9-16 Hit Points of physical damage per hit. Once per 2 melee turns each of its attacks can do an additional 13-24 Hit Points of electrical damage.

The Greater Demon Tankras, Hell's Own General, has 4 arms that each wield a weapon. The four weapons are: (a) a 7 foot long golden sword that does 21-40 Hit Points of damage and a +20 critical hit; (b) a 7 foot long silver battle axe that does 31-50 Hit Points of damage and a +20 critical hit; (c) a spiked maul that does 15-24 Hit Points of damage and paralyzes the part of the body it hits; (d) flaming darts that can be thrown up to 900 yards and do 21-40 Hit Points of physical damage, a +80 critical hit and 7-12 Hit Points of fire damage per melee round (up to 13) that it sticks in its target.

Midkemia Press' Heart of the Sunken Lands

Gorbles and Goroulyas are four-armed monsters that do 4-24 and 2-16 Hit Points of damage (respectively) with their claws.

Purples are large four armed creatures that do 4-40 Hit Points damage with their claw attacks. If their opponents are at a distance they can throw boulders that do 3-18 Hit Points of damage.

Asura, who can grow four Extra Arms. His final form plays this straight and averts this): he grows ONE THOUSAND ARMS, which then fuse together into two arms to create Mantra Asura.

Apart from Asura, there's also Vlitra's core and Chakravartin. When fighting the latter, he breaks all of Asura's extra arms and the armor over his last two arms, forcing him to fight — literally — barehanded.

The Bullymongs in Borderlands 2 have four very muscular arms, and two relatively puny, almost unused legs.

Lord Recluse, who has four extra giant spider-like claw-arms affixed to his back. According to the book of the game, those are part of his body.

The mutated Arachnoids have the same claw-arms. The extra arms of the Crab Spider Soldiers are purely mechanical, though, although they are surgically attached and connected to the soldier's nervous system.

And the Meat Doctors of the Freakshow, who have limbs with rotary cutting blades grafted to them.

Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction, is typically depicted as a massive Big Red Devil humanoid with four arms, each often holding a different weapon. He has attempted the takeover of Nirn/Mundus multiple times throughout history, serving as either the direct Big Bad or the Man Behind the Man in three games in the series.

Daedric Titans are a type of lesser Daedra created by Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of Domination and Corruption, by corrupting dragons. Unlike standard dragons, whose wings and forelimbs are combined, Titans have four limbs (two arms and two legs) in addition to their wings.

Asura, an optional boss in Final Fantasy IV, had six arms and three heads. She's queen of the Feymarch / Land of Summons, and if you can defeat her (which is impossible if you don't know the trick) she'll allow Rydia to use her as a summoned monster.

And Gilgamesh returns for the prequel, morphing into his eight-armed form for his Super Mode (each of which wielding a random weapon from his repertoire, making his attacks more reliable than they were).

In Final Fantasy XIII-2, Jet Bahamut and his two fellow Bahamut helpers all have four arms, though they're mostly there so they can fight you while maintaining a Badass Armfold, using only two arms for their attacks the majority of the time.

In Five Nights at Freddy's 2, the Mangle seems to have at least two animatronic endoskeletons' worth of limbs. She attacks by biting, though.

Kazdan Paratus of The Force Unleashed built himself four mechanical limbs to crawl around Raxus Prime like a mad bug.

The Optional boss, Kurt Zisa, in Kingdom Hearts has six arms, wielding two swords with the two arms in the middle between the top and bottom arms.

The Sovani race in The Last Remnant has four arms. When they aren't being used for quadruple-wielding, the lower set of arms are kept crossed.

Mace: The Dark Age: Asmodeus, the Final Boss, is a four-armed dragonlike demon lord that possesses the Mace of Tanis that every one of the fighters is seeking for their own reasons.

Subversion: Star Overlord Valvoga from Makai Kingdom certainly looks like it could be completely menacing, if not for the fact that multi-armed Micky is a complete pushover and is always bullied around by his other parts, the mad dragon-head Dryzen and the temptress Ophelia.

Her teammate, Screaming Mantis, also has powered armour that gives extra limbs: six, in Mantis's case, four of which are as unused as her actual arms, while the top mechanical ones are used for manipulating her Psycho Mantis and The Sorrow dolls.

In Phantasy Star Online 2, Dark Falz Elder initially has eight arms and grows two additional ones once he's been damaged sufficiently. He generally uses three of them at a time for direct attacks and launches lasers and meteors with the remaining ones. It's possible to destroy all but two of them, which both severely limits his attacking options and grants you extra rewards once he's defeated.

The Bleu Ringahda is another example of this, being a bird/centaur hybrid with an extra pair of arms. It wields a pair of lances with the lower pair, and initially just keeps the top pair crossed in a Badass Armfold, but when it gets serious, it'll start using them wield the pair of katanas sheathed on its sides.

The Kobold boss in Phoenotopia has four arms, wielding blasters with all of them for one attack.

Planescape: Torment has Nordom, a Rogue Modron (see the Dungeons & Dragons example above) of the Quadrone caste, who uses his secondary set of arms to allow him to use two crossbows simultaneously. This makes him unique in the game, as all of the other Quadrones seen are "Messenger" variants, who have chosen to replace their second set of arms with wings that let them fly instead.

Some Pokémon gain extra arms in their most powerful forms — namely Machamp.

Oddly enough, Geodude gains an extra pair of arms when it evolves into Graveler, but goes back to having one set when it evolves again into Golem. Given that Golem's head resembles that of Machamp, and that both species evolve when traded, this has lead to fan theories that they were originally designed to be traded with each other, swapping traits along the way (a mechanic that would be eventually implemented in Generation V with Escavalier and Accelgor).

Golbat gains an extra pair of wings when it evolves into Crobat, if that counts.

When Ledyba evolves into Ledian, it is more noticeable that the first 4 limbs are in fact arms.

Arceus is described in myth as having shaped the universe with its 1,000 arms (apparently in reference to various Hindu deities). When encountered in-game, however, it has a vaguely horse-shaped body with no arms.

Cofagrigus is a Ghost-type animated sarcophagus with four arms.

Barbaracle has an odd twist on this while it appears to be a multi-armed humanoid, it's actually a colony of barnacles, with individuals serving as the head and each limb.

Tsuchigumo from Sakura Wars 2 is a woman gifted with six arms and, adding to the multi-armed theme, even extends to the mecha she pilots, which is also multi-armed! Her name literally means "Earth Spider", and her skill set revolves around hitting multiple targets in eight directions on the battlefield. Strangely, concept art shows her wielding a weapon in each of her six hands, though she's unarmed within the game itself.

The Time Eater from Sonic Generations. He has 4 arms in his true form when he is piloted by both Doctors Eggman and Robotnik.

Subverted in Unreal: the locals of Na Pali (the Nali) have four arms and two legs, but are Non Action Guys. It's odd considering various critters (cow and rabbit equivalents)have only two limbs total, both legs. They also have floating 'gasbags' which consist of a wide head and two arms.

Another Hindu-inspired demon is the Shivarra from World of Warcraft. Despite the name, they appear to be based off of the goddess Kali (or perhaps her much less evil but not much less scary aspect Durga).

Warcraft games have the above-mentioned Shivarra demons, as well as female Nagas (male Nagas have only 2 arms). Undead abominations have a small extra arm sticking from their shoulder (they're created by patching together a bunch of corpses).

Subverted by Monoko in Yume Nikki. She looks like a normal (albeit, monochromatic) young girl, until you use the Stoplight effect to stop her, at which point she grows three extra arms: one from the shounder, one from the elbow and one on top of her head. But other than having a weird fullscreen event when interacting with her in this form, she's far from dangerous.

Destiny has the Fallen, a race of arachnid-like space pirates that are actually born with four arms, but soon get docked to two and become Dregs. If these Dregs prove themselves worthy, they may have a set of robotic limbs installed, bringing them back up to 4.

The Stalker in Outlast II, the creature during the school segments, is a Humanoid Abomination whose upper torso is covered in groping hands. Considering that he is Blake's perception of a Pedophile Priest who caused the death of his childhood friend, the connection is certainly there.

In We Know the Devil, Jupiter gains these when possessed by the devil, and in the True Ending.

Justice from House of the Dead 4 is a gigantic zombie with four muscular arms, and serves as the first boss of the game.

Subverted when it's pointed out that a four-armed alien has the same type of eyes as a human, and as a result, even if he can handle four guns at a time, he can still only aim at one target, same as everyone else.

In The Order of the Stick, this is one of Durkon's (as well as all the other dwarves thus far appearing in the strip) fears concerning trees: they have so many "arms" that they'd be able to attack you dozens of times per turn. That trees don't actually move doesn't dissuade his fears. They're just waiting for the right moment to overthrow us all.

4chan gives us Ball of Arms Man, created from a Mutants & Masterminds DM's complaint about a player who wanted to make a character who'd spent all his powers on Additional Limbs. He's a sentient portal to the Elemental Plane of Arms, meaning that he has pretty much an infinite supply of arms.

Jack from What Is This Black Magic You Call Science'' can have up to eight arms, each one representing one of his eight tails, since his human form is an illusion covering his true form.

SCP-1420 ("Tartary Eggs"). A creature that hatched from SCP-1420 grew to large size and sprouted large arms ending in bird beaks. It killed several people before being terminated.

SCP-1788 ("The Adults"). Adult forms of SCP-1788-1 appear to be extremely obese human beings with two extra arms located below their main ones. Their bones are reinforced with heavy metals and their muscles have been interwoven with carbon nanotubes, giving them superhuman strength, speed, and durability.

Another show by the same creative team of Ben 10 that features a multi-armed character is Generator Rex, where the character Breach, a psychotic-emo girl dressed in a sailor suit uniform with her hair draping over her face who underwent mutation with the activation of nanites that resided within her body, has a another set of arms protruding below her original set of arms (while the forearms of her original set has grown monstrously huge!). Strangely, she doesn't really seem to use her additional limbs all that much even while in combat. They usually just like to hang around while her upper limbs get the job done. Occasionally, she has been seen using those extra arms of hers... to only mimic and move in concert with the gestures her upper arms perform. To be fair, her overly humongous upper arms kinda blocks the use of her lower pair of arms for anything but making gestures. And besides, she also has the ability to generate and create numerous portals on a whim.

The Third Arm Sash in Xiaolin Showdown acts as, well, a third arm for grabbing onto things. However, it is only used for its secondary ability to extend out to an arbitrarily long distance, so the characters can grab things out of reach. The only times it gets used in addition to both other arms is when the Monks use it to do chores.

Mecha-Shiva from The Venture Bros., at least according to the eponymous characters' court testimony against The Monarch.

Gadget Boy & Heather introduces a villainess with six arms and uses a spider theme. Unsurprisingly, she goes by the name of Spydra.

In the canceled series Stripperella, a supervillainess going by the name of Pushy Galore has two (hidden) extra sets of arms due to, in her words, the fringe benefits of being a genetic physicist. After revealing her six-armed frame, she even tells Stripperella to call her Octo-Pushy. Sadly, she only gets screen time in one episode, though the slight perk is that she actually uses her six arms to do a multitude of actions that are lacking in many other animations featuring multi-armed characters (such as piloting and controlling a blimp with all six of her arms).

Several characters on Jimmy Two-Shoes. Molotov's unnamed wife has four arms, as do every Gnomans and the Racing Bugs.

In the Ćon Flux animated series, there was a very very brief shot of Trevor with a four-armed assassin. However, she was beset by bees almost immediately upon her introduction and was killed shortly (due to an allergic reaction to bee stings). Talk about one-shot.

In an episode of Danny Phantom, we are introduced to Pandora, a ghostly version of her Greek counterpart, but with an additional pair of arms.

In the episode "The Crawler" of the Extreme Ghostbusters, secretary Janine gets abducted by an insectoid king and was transformed into a moth-like creature with four arms. She later leads the king into thinking that she's truly transformed, and unleashes a ghost trap right in front of him by hiding it with her second pair of arms and wings that she acquired through said transformation. She gets better.

Also, one of Shendu's siblings, TsoLan, has two smaller arms underneath his main arms, and he's one of the strongest enemies on the show.

Regular Show features two four-armed characters, a wrestler going by the name of Four-Armageddon, and Death's Wife.

Mordecai and Rigby also become merged into a two-headed, four-armed form during "Video Game Wizards."

Four arms are a recurring element with Ninjago villains. There's Samukai, the Skullkin general in the first season, Stone Army General Kozu in the third season, Nadakhan and the Giant Stone Warrior in the sixth season, and Mr. E in the eighth season. Long-running antagonist Lord Garmadon gains an extra set of arms for a time in the third season, and this is referenced in The LEGO Ninjago Movie, where these are a feature he's had since he became Lord Garmadon. This tendency is because each line the villain was featured in had a MacGuffin corresponding to each of the four main ninja, and so having a four-armed villain poses the threat of them wielding all of them at once.

It became so much of a recurring element that Jay lampshades it when Mr. E uses the stolen Oni Mask of Vengeance to gain four arms.

In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), the turtles get attacked by an alien four-armed female assassin in the episode "Divide and Conquer." Living up to this trope's name, she quickly mops the floor with them.

In the 2012 turtles the mutant Spider Bytez has several spider arms on top of his head, which proves quite effective for fighting the turtles.

In the Megas XLR episode "DMV - Department of Megas Violations", Darklos the bounty hunter has an army of what seem to be humongous four-armed rhinoceri.

Zigzagged with Elzar, the four-armed Neptunian cooking show host in Futurama. It was revealed in one episode that during the 3007 economic depression, he made something called "Human Broth" to feed impoverished citizens. (It doesn't take a genius to figure out what it was made of.) Of course, whether that makes him dangerous to humans personally isn't known, and he probably doesn't do that anymore. (Well, probably. Stranger things happen on this show.)

In the superhero-themed Buttons and Mindy episode "Super Buttons" from Animaniacs, Buttons battles a carnivorous spider person (the mayor's own words) atop City Hall, an anthro spider supervillainess with four arms. She puts all four hands to use operating a giant fly swatter to put Buttons out of commission.

In Steven Universe, having extra sets of body parts (usually arms or eyes) is a common trait of fusions. Of the Crystal Gem's fusions, five out of seven have multiple arms. Then there's Malachite, a two-Gem fusion with THREE sets of arms, two of which function as legs.

In Samurai Jack, Jack had to defeat all nine of the champions at the Dome of Doom to survive and free the prisoners that were forced to fight. One of the champions is named Ganeesh, a Hindu deity-like creature with stereotypical arabian clothing and swords, who has six arms and a sword in each.

Totally Spies! had a villain of the week who was a ringmaster that wanted to use a mirror device to mutate and deform the masses into a freakshow as revenge for being mistreated. He was a sideshow himself, known as Octo-boy because he had two extra sets of arms, a fact he reveals as he physically confronts the spies for thwarting his plans. The girls can't help but compliment his tailor for making a suit that completely hides that fact.

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